


Here (In Your Arms)

by CallistaHogan



Category: Figure Skating RPF, Olympics RPF
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Romance, seriously so much fluff it's absurd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-17 22:51:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14199369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CallistaHogan/pseuds/CallistaHogan
Summary: "Tessa learned not to read into the tiny moments between them." (Or, Tessa worries about what comes next for her relationship with Scott during Stars on Ice in Japan.)





	Here (In Your Arms)

**Author's Note:**

> My first finished piece of fiction in actual years is 20 pages of VM fluff. I don't know what that says about me, but probably nothing good. These idiots have absolutely consumed my life and this is the result.
> 
> Just call me a maple tree, because this fic is full of sap, telling you that upfront. Title is from the song of the same name.

Tessa learned not to read into the tiny moments between them. She did not dwell on the way Scott looked at her sometimes, softness curving every line of his face. She did not read into the many compliments in the never-ending interviews, because this was _Scott_ and Scott always talked about her like that. So there was nothing new there, nothing to possibly misinterpret. She did not read into the way he found any excuse to touch her or kiss her, because they were _TessaandScott._ It was just the nature of their relationship.

It used to annoy her the way the media constantly tried to put a label on their relationship. Wasn’t it enough for them to focus on their skating instead of trying to pry into the details of her life that should remain for her and Scott to know? Her personal life had no business being in every single entertainment magazine or clickbaity Internet article, and yet everyone from Ellen to random Instagram followers wanted to know an exact definition of her relationship with Scott. It was understandable, she supposed, but it still took every bit of self-control she had to laugh it off and come up with yet another explanation about their “business relationship.”

But after the interview with Ellen, the press started to die down, and she could get back to living her life. The only problem was that the one question she learned not to ask herself crept into her thoughts more and more frequently, and it was getting harder and harder to tune it out.

*

The first time she felt a palpable shift after the Olympics was during Stars on Ice in Japan. It was a small moment, hardly worth remarking upon. Yet it felt like a stone dropping into a pond, sending ripples out in every direction.

It happened during one of their many practices. Everyone else involved in the show had left the rink, leaving Tessa and Scott time to run through their routine without anyone else watching. It was a frequent occurrence for the pair, so none of the others took any notice of it. The practice went as normal until one of the lifts at the tail end of the routine.

Scott eased Tessa down onto the ice, but his hands lingered on her waist for a second too long. Tessa stilled in his arms and made no move to disentangle herself, even though they should be stepping into the next sequence of their routine. A current of electricity coursed underneath her skin.  She covered Scott’s hands with her own to keep them where they were, as if her body had suddenly stopped obeying her mind and did precisely what it wanted to do, the consequences be damned.

Tessa hesitated, her mind torn in two separate directions: Move closer, or step away. It felt like she had been debating that same choice on and off for the past ten years, maybe even before then. Too often, she had stepped away and skated around the boards a few times, trying to calm herself down. She convinced herself: _this was Scott, this was just the way it was between them. Stop worrying about it._ And then she skated back to Scott’s side, a smile on her face like nothing had happened.

But the thought of stepping outside of the circle of Scott’s arms made Tessa feel like she was coming apart at the seams. So she stayed right where she was, her entire body alight with electricity. No matter how many times she was this close to Scott, it still felt like…

_Like coming home._

She closed her eyes and rubbed her thumbs against the back of Scott’s hands. Scott, in return, squeezed Tessa’s waist. His voice, when he finally spoke, was rough and gravelly, sending shockwaves through her system.

“Tess?” he asked. “You okay?”

Tessa kept her eyes closed for another moment and then looked up at Scott. His eyes were exceptionally brown in this light, his pupils blown wide as he looked at her, a lopsided smile playing against the corners of the lips. Tessa swallowed hard and then smiled in return.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m fine.”

Scott raised an eyebrow. “You don’t sound fine,” he said. He took a hand from Tessa’s waist and rubbed her arm in soft, soothing strokes. “Are you sure?”

“Of course,” said Tessa.

Her entire body felt like a livewire, static crackling along her bones. She felt Scott’s other hand through her clothing, and for a brief moment, she wondered what he would feel like without any clothes getting in the way.

Tessa started in surprise and dropped her hand from Scott’s as if she had been burned. Where the _hell_ had that thought come from? This was _Scott_ , her best friend. She would be lying if she didn’t say that she had entertained such thoughts in the past, but not recently, not since their comeback, not since they decided to put any potential feelings (for each other or for anyone else) on the back burner until after the Olympics. It had always been simple: Focus on the Olympics, and then go from there.

Tessa ignored the persistent voice in the back of her mind that told her that the Olympics were over. She tried to clear her mind of any of those pesky thoughts and put them back in the box where they belonged _._

She needed to move away from Scott. She couldn’t think clearly when he was touching her like that. She needed _space._ Tessa shifted away from him, but he reached out and grabbed her hand. He pulled her back toward him, an inscrutable look in his eyes.

“Tess,” he said in that tone of voice that said, very clearly, that he was not buying any of her bullshit. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

Tessa sighed. “Nothing,” she repeated, wondering who she was trying to convince more: herself or Scott. “I just need to take five minutes, that’s all.” She could tell by the look in Scott’s eyes that he did not believe her for a second. Tessa racked her brain for a suitable excuse and came up empty. “It’s nothing, I promise,” she said again.

Scott sighed and dropped her hand. “Okay,” he said. “But you’ll tell me when you’re ready, yeah?”

Tessa nodded. That was one of the things she loved so much about Scott: the way he understood, without her having to say a word, when she was not willing to talk about whatever was bothering her. Yet he always knew that she would tell him eventually. It was a matter of the correct timing.

Scott grinned at her and Tessa felt warmth spread across her entire body. She dropped her gaze and skated away to the boards to get a sip of water. By the time her five-minute break was over, she had almost convinced herself that the entire moment had been a figment of her imagination, that she had misperceived the tension between them, the longing that spread through her body at the touch of his hand.

It was better that way, she told herself, and she almost believed it.

*

Tessa had a specific method of coping with residual Scott emotions (yes, she had a term for it). She did not spend her entire teenage years in close quarters with a hormonal teenage boy without learning how to distinguish between her relationship with Scott on the ice and her relationship with him off the ice. It was rather simple, once she boiled it down to its essentials.

Most of the time, she wrote off any of Scott’s many touches by telling herself that they naturally had a tactile relationship. Scott was like that with everyone, she rationalized: it was nothing specific to _her_ , nothing that she needed to spend too long thinking about. And he had always been like that with her. Other people looking in on their relationship might not be able to understand it, but she always did.

On those few occasions where the lines did blur, she had a litany of excuses ready in the back of her mind. Her favorite was that it was natural for her body to react whenever Scott was close to her. If her skin erupted into gooseflesh whenever Scott touched her bare skin, it wasn’t anything specific to Scott, it was the way bodies reacted when they were close to each other. If her heart thundered in her ears every time she looked at Scott during a routine, it was adrenaline, nothing more and nothing less. If she moved closer to Scott after the routine ended, if she let her eyes slip closed as she locked her arms tightly around Scott’s neck and clutched him as if he was her only lifeline, it was because they were _partners_ , and they had created magic together, and obviously she’d want to be close to him in those moments.

The world might not understand, but she made it her mission, since very early on in her partnership, to understand. When the lines did blur, it was nothing but a blip on the radar. A stare too long here, a lingering touch, a softly-spoken word, a stolen kiss on the ice that never made it past the boards.

That was all it ever was.

But eventually, in the back of her mind, she wondered what would happen when the haze of competition, the sweat and the blood and the back-breaking, torturous work, ended, and they tried to carve out a new path for themselves. She both feared and anticipated the answer.

*

About midway through their Stars on Ice tour in Japan, Tessa’s eyes flew open in the middle of the night, her entire body on high alert, sweat clinging to her pores. She could not recall the specifics of the dream, but it had included Scott. She had reached out her fingers to touch him in the dream and he disappeared right in front of her eyes like a mirage.

The finality of it made her want to scream or cry. She couldn’t decide which one. She settled for sitting up in bed, squinting through the darkness at the bright light of the hotel alarm clock.

_2:30 am._

Tessa cursed under her breath. Nothing good ever happened after two in the morning, especially not when they had an early practice. She should try to go back to sleep, but her heart, still thudding painfully fast in her chest, made that seem impossible.

The silence of the hotel room pressed against her on all sides. The bed, previously comfortable, was almost oppressively hot. She threw the blankets off her body with a frustrated huff, but even that did not help. Her skin crawled with the memory of the dream.

Before she could talk herself out of it, she unplugged her phone, laying upside down on the bedside table. The glow from the screen almost blinded her as she opened her latest text exchange with Scott. She tapped out a quick question before she could talk herself out of it.

_You up?_

Before Tessa could beat herself up for interrupting Scott’s sleep for her own mini panic attack, her phone pinged with an answer.

_Yeah, u okay T?_

Tessa bit her lip. She could say she was fine, but there was no way Scott would buy that, not after texting him at 2:33 in the morning.

_Can I come over? Can’t sleep._

_Always_

Tessa smiled as she put her phone back to sleep and plugged it into the charger. She slid out of bed and quickly put on a pair of slippers beside her bed. She spared a few moments to throw her hair into a ponytail and make sure that her pajamas were not too askew, but then again, she doubted Scott would even notice at this hour. And he had definitely seen her more disheveled before.

She walked out of her room and down the hallway to Scott’s room, more thankful than ever that they had been given separate rooms on tour. A roommate would definitely have made this more complicated, although most of their teammates had grown used to their shenanigans (or, as they called it, “flirting”) over the past several years.

She stopped outside of Scott’s door and knocked lightly twice. The door swung open a few moments later, revealing a blurry-eyed Scott. His hair stuck straight up in the back like it did in the mornings when he was too lazy to comb it, and Tessa couldn’t help the wave of affection that washed over her.

“Hey, kiddo,” said Scott, rubbing his bleary eyes. He even managed a tiny smile, despite his clear exhaustion. “What’s up?”

Tessa didn’t say anything. She threw herself into Scott’s arms and clung to his neck like he was the only one that could keep her upright. Scott stumbled backwards a few steps--clearly, he had not been expecting her abrupt reaction--but wrapped his own arms around her. She closed her eyes and inhaled the smell of pine needles and sleep and _Scott_.

Scott’s hands felt like hot coals as he rubbed comforting circles on her back. “Hey,” he mumbled against her ear. His voice, gravelly with tiredness, sent goosebumps erupting along her skin. “You okay, T?”

Tessa nodded against his chest, burrowing her head further into his soft T-shirt. Really, his shirt had no right to be this soft and _comfortable._ It was no wonder he was the first person that came to her mind after a bad dream, because nothing bad could ever happen when she was in his arms. It was impossible. Like a rule of the universe or something.

Tessa would have been content to remain right where she was for the rest of the night, but the door to Scott’s hotel room was wide open and if someone came across them they would never hear the end of it. Reluctantly, Tessa extricated herself from Scott’s arms. Scott grumbled under his breath but let her step away from the hug long enough to shut the door.

Scott’s arms were open for her when she turned back to him. She gave him a half-hearted smile, her heart bursting with something too full for her to name.

“Sorry for waking you up,” she said. 

Even though Scott was exhausted, he still managed to roll his eyes. “Come on, T,” he said. “You don’t need to apologize for that. C’mere.”

Scott did not wait for her to fit herself back into his arms. He pulled her toward him and wrapped his arms around her. Tessa laughed against his chest and curled her arms around his waist, the planes of his back solid and firm against her palms. Tessa wondered, once again, what it would feel like to touch his bare skin and shivered, even though she wasn’t cold.

 Scott pulled away as soon as he felt her tremors against him. “You’re cold,” he said before Tessa could tell him otherwise. “Come on, let’s get you warmed up.”

Scott grabbed Tessa’s hand and dragged them both toward the bed. Tessa let go of him long enough to discard her slippers and slide beneath the blankets, still toasty from Scott’s body heat. She reached for him as soon as Scott himself got into bed. Her heart pounded a nervous rhythm against her rib cage as Scott adjusted the covers around them. They had shared a bed before (Tessa often had nights when she couldn’t sleep, and Scott’s presence always soothed her), but this time, her entire body felt like a coiled spring ready to snap. 

She hoped that her emotions did not show through her body language as she cuddled closer to Scott. Tonight, there was no way to close enough to him, and she was too tired to figure out what it meant. If it meant anything. She tucked her body against Scott’s side so that she could feel every part of Scott’s side. He was like a living furnace, warmth sinking into every inch of her skin.

She tangled one leg between Scott’s and pressed her feet against his. Scott hissed but otherwise did not say anything as her cold skin made contact. He wrapped his arms around her waist and tugged her even closer to him, his breath tickling her hair. 

“Go to sleep, T,” he whispered against the top of her head.

Her eyes already felt heavy with impending sleep as she nodded against his chest. The last thing she felt before slipping back into the land of dreams was Scott’s lips pressed gently against the top of her head.

*

Tessa woke to see Scott’s face inches away from her own, his eyes soft and sleepy at the corners. She swallowed back the lump in her throat and tried to smile at him, even though she could already tell that it was far too early to be smiling at anyone (unless they were bringing her preferred coffee order to her in bed). But Scott was always the exception to the rule.

“Hey,” she whispered.

“Hey,” whispered Scott. He smiled at her, although she could tell there was something bothering him. It was something in the way that his smile did not reach his eyes like it normally did.

“Did you sleep well?” asked Tessa. “You look--”

“--worried,” finished Scott. Normally, Tessa would be annoyed at being interrupted, but she could not bring herself to get annoyed at Scott when he looked so much like a kicked puppy. “When are you going to tell me what’s bothering you?”

Tessa sighed. She would have preferred to have this conversation at another time, ideally after several cups of coffee, but Scott deserved an answer after she had woken him up in the middle of the night. He would not care if she said that she didn’t want to talk about it, but he deserved better than her secrecy. She had learned over the twenty years of her partnership that it was better to leave everything out in the open rather than let it fester in private.

“Now, I suppose.” Tessa snuggled deeper into the pillow. “As long as you don’t make me get out of bed.”

Scott laughed. _There_ was the Scott she recognized. He shifted almost imperceptibly closer to her as he shook his head.

“No, T, you don’t have to get out of bed,” he said.

“Good,” said Tessa on an exhale as she tried to figure out what to say next, how to put into words what had previously been inexpressible. How could she possibly tell Scott what was on her mind when she could not even understand it herself? Then again, Scott was the one person on the planet who knew her better than she knew herself.

Tess decided that it was better to start safe than talk about all of the complicated emotions that had arisen after their moment in practice the other day, which she had almost completely rationalized away as her overactive imagination.

“I… I had a bad dream last night,” said Tessa. She dropped her gaze down to the space between them and fixated on the slightly rumpled white sheet. It was hard to find words when she was looking right at Scott. “It was thinking about what will happen when we get back from tour and announce that we’re officially retiring, and I guess I was just nervous, because you--the you in the dream--disappeared. Right when I reached out for you. Like you weren’t even there.”

It sounded ridiculous even saying it out loud, but there it was. Dragging the dream out into the light helped to dispel some of its power, but the fears behind it were too real. Too justified, even. Their last attempt at retirement had not gone well. Tessa remembered all too clearly the many hours in therapy during their comeback that had stripped her emotions down to the core and made her feel raw and broken before they could even begin to be healed. They were better now than they had ever been before Sochi, the product of hard work, dedication and maturity, but the fears were still insidious thoughts in her mind.

“Tess, that’s not gonna happen,” said Scott. He was so close to her that she could feel his soft breath ruffle her hair as he spoke. “We’re stronger than that, you know we are.”

Scott sounded so certain that Tessa couldn’t help herself. She looked up at him and saw the truth of his words blazing from his eyes. Whenever she was uncertain, he was always the one to pull her back and remind her of everything that had been through together. Even though Scott often told her that she was his rock, it was the other way around.

Tessa gnawed at her lip in that way she did only when she was nervous. “We don’t know what the future holds,” she said. “How can you be so certain? We thought the same thing after Sochi, and look what happened.”

Scott, to her surprise, grinned. “Yeah,” he said. “Look what happened. Here we are.” 

It was impossible not to smile after those words. She had to admit that Scott had a good point. After Sochi, when the weight of disappointment and frustration and betrayal (not at each other, at the other people who had let them down so utterly) weighed down on them, it felt easier, at times, to let each other go, to leave their competitive lives behind and move on.

But that did not happen. They couldn’t move on, not when they had unfinished business. And here they were now, two more gold medals heavy around their necks, their connection stronger than it’s ever been. She never would have thought it at the time, but it was all for the best.

Still, residual doubts clung to her thoughts. “You don’t think we’ll drift apart?” she asked, her voice tiny even to her own ears.

Scott’s expression shifted from one of levity to one of the utmost seriousness. He tensed his jaw: his telltale sign that he was fighting against his own thoughts in order to form words. In the absence of anything to say, Scott reached between them and took one of Tessa’s hands in his. Their fingers slotted together into their natural handhold, her pinky between his index and middle finger. He squeezed her hand and Tessa returned the pressure. Somehow, she already felt calmer.

“No,” said Scott with such finality that Tessa felt like she could cry. “We’ve come too far for that now, T. What happened after Sochi was… a mess. We’re not the same people we were back then.”

The doubts in Tessa’s mind began to recede into the shadows once again. She scooted closer to him on the bed, even though they were already almost as close as they could get. Her legs tangled with his, her feet pressed against the bridges of his.

“Yeah,” she breathed, more to convince herself once and for all than to convince Scott. “I shouldn’t have even asked, I know we’re not the same people, I just--can’t help reliving the past sometimes.”

Scott rubbed his thumb along Tessa's knuckles, his touch always a counterbalance to her roiling thoughts. “Remember what our phrase was during PyeongChang?”

Tessa nodded. “Be present.”

“Exactly,” said Scott. “So, be present. Stop worrying about the future and take each day at a time.”

That was easy for Scott to say, since he always lived in the moment, but once again, he was right. He always had the right words to say in order to reassure her and bring her back down to where she needed to be. Not even her family was able to talk her down quite so well. She had no idea what she did to deserve someone like Scott, but she hoped she would never take it for granted.

“Okay,” said Tessa. “I’ll be present.”

Scott squeezed her hand in agreement. Both of them dissolved into a sleepy kind of silence, now that there was nothing left to say, but they were still completely in tune with each other. She felt every time Scott took a breath and let it out again, and her body subconsciously matched his rhythm. He rubbed her knuckles with his thumb, slowly, methodically. It was a gesture meant to be soothing, but every time Scott’s slightly dry fingers scraped against her smooth skin, she felt heat flare up inside her body.

The air around them seemed to thicken with some inexplicable tension--the same feeling she had during their practice the other day, when her heart felt like it was going to escape from her chest. A kind of recklessness seized Tessa as she looked up and met Scott’s eyes.

She found the same emotions reflected in his dark eyes. Tessa’s mouth suddenly felt dry. She licked her lips to moisten them and saw Scott’s eyes flicker downward. Tessa’s mind went blissfully, completely blank, but her body was on high alert. She inched closer to Scott’s face, her heart beating a frantic rhythm in her chest. Scott moved to meet her, his lips almost, just barely, touching hers. Tessa sighed against his lips, ready to bridge that last divide between them, her entire body ready for it, screaming for it, even--

A sudden knock on the door broke the tension between them like a sledgehammer. Tessa moved away from Scott so fast she nearly fell off the other side of the bed. Chiddy’s voice echoed through the room a second later.

“Hey, Scott! Practice starts soon!”

Scott groaned loudly and scrubbed his hand over his eyes. His expression was completely unreadable: a foreign experience for Tessa. A block of dread dropped into Tessa’s stomach and she tried not to let it show across her features.

“I’ll be there soon,” said Scott. The frustration was evident in every syllable.

“Five minutes,” said Chiddy, “or we are leaving without you!”

Tessa waited until Chiddy’s footsteps retreated into the distance before bolting out of bed like she had been shot out of a cannon. She smoothed down her clothes and looked anywhere but at Scott.

“I--I better get ready,” said Tessa. “We don’t want to be late for practice.”

Scott sat up in bed. Tessa suddenly became _very_ aware that he had somehow shucked his shirt off in the night. Her cheeks flushed. God, what was _wrong_ with her? This was Scott. She needed to get a grip on herself, but she couldn’t do that when Scott was there, looking like _that._

“Tess--” began Scott.

“No,” said Tessa. Her voice sounded high even to her own ears. “We can talk about this later.”

Then, like a coward, she practically ran out of Scott’s room, her mind whirling with all the questions she had never been allowing herself to ask before.

She was well, and truly, screwed.

*

They did not talk about it later. For two people who only managed to work together the way they did because of their open communication, it was like they had both decided that their moment in bed together was the one topic they would never discuss. It got filed away in Tessa’s drawer in her mind labeled _Do Not Touch_ , and Scott seemed perfectly content to leave it there as well.

The rest of Stars on Ice passed by relatively uneventfully. No one else on the tour noticed anything amiss, but Tessa could feel the tension like a thick cloud surrounding them. Every time Scott touched her, her body tingled with desire. Her fingers dwelled on his skin even when there was no reason for it. It was as if she could not find enough reasons to be close to him.

Scott showed no sign of tension during the performances. He threw themselves into their modified version of Moulin Rouge and their new exhibition, “Rock My World,” with all of the focus and determination she had seen for the past twenty years. But when the spotlight faded, he retreated from her. His face, normally so expressive and readable, became a brick wall. He still talked and joked with her like he usually did, but there was a level of distance between them that she could not begin to understand.

Once, the night before their last performance in Japan, Tessa tried to get him to open up, but he steadfastly refused to admit that there was anything wrong.

“I’m fine, T,” he said, over and over again. Tessa wondered if this was how he felt when she had given him the same answer a little over a week ago. It seemed like it had been forever since that moment. Her life had been so easy and recognizable back then. She knew exactly where she and Scott stood. Now?

It was a mystery that she could not even begin to solve without Scott’s help. But he was not about to address the elephant in the room, and neither was she.  
  
Tessa tried to wheedle the truth out of him a few more times, but she gave up when it became apparent that she was not going to get an answer out of him quite yet. Everytime Tessa opened her mouth to ask him about their almost-kiss, her stomach seized up and she could not find the words. If she was honest, she was not sure she was ready to hear his response. Maybe, when they got back to Canada and returned to their normal routine before the start of their next tour, she would be able to find some downtime to talk to him about it.

Maybe by then she’d know exactly what she wanted to hear him say.

*

Whenever Tessa was in doubt or Scott was being a jackass again (which, if she were honest, were usually related), she went to Jordan. Somehow, her sister could calm her down and help her see a perspective she had never considered before without being judgmental and condescending about it.

So her first stop after landing in Canada was Jordan’s apartment. As soon as Jordan pulled open the door and got one look at Tessa, she rolled her eyes and stepped aside to let Tessa through the doorway.

“What did Scott do now?” she asked.

Tessa laughed as she shut the door behind her. “Am I that predictable?”

“Yes,” said Jordan. “The second I saw the text that you had landed and you were coming to see me, I asked myself what insane thing did Scott do this time. And does it require ice cream?”

“Everything requires ice cream,” said Tessa. The prospect of eating her feelings automatically made her feel better. Her sister always knew how to come through for her.

Jordan laughed. “True. I got your favorite, it’s in the freezer.”

Tessa made her way into the kitchen. She still did not have the words to describe what had happened between her and Scott, but she had a pint full of ice cream waiting for her that would help her figure it out. She opened the fridge and took out two pints of ice cream: her own cookies and cream and Jordan’s mint chocolate chip. Jordan joined her in the kitchen as she fetched two spoons from the drawer.

Jordan perched at the granite kitchen island. “So, what is it?” she asked as Tessa slid onto the stool in front of her.

Tessa did not answer right away. She peeled the cover off her ice cream and dug her spoon into it. She concerned herself with extracting a big scoop and popping it into her mouth. Jordan kept her eyes on her the whole time.

“That bad, huh?”

“It’s not bad, exactly,” said Tessa, sticking her spoon back into the pint for a second scoop. “It’s just… confusing? I thought Scott and I had figured out what we were to each other, but now that the Olympics are over, it’s like… like all the boundaries we had set for ourselves have fallen apart.”

Jordan raised an eyebrow. “Did you guys have sex?” she asked.

Tessa choked on the spoonful of ice cream she put into her mouth and sputtered to find words. “No! God, no, of course not,” she said. She ignored the skeptical look on Jordan’s face and barrelled on. “We almost kissed.”

“And?” Jordan looked supremely unimpressed as she pulled the lid off her own ice cream. “That’s it? You guys have almost kissed hundreds of times. You’ve told me that before.”

“But--” Tessa struggled with the truth of Jordan’s words. They had done more than almost kiss more times than she could count, but they never crossed that physical boundary off the ice. Not ever. It was not a thought on their mind when they were younger, and their comeback was so focused on that singular goal of Olympic gold that everything else disappeared into the background. They convinced themselves it was all acting and getting into character and moved on. There was never any time for anything else.

“But I don’t know who we are to each other now,” said Tessa. “What do we do since we’re no longer competitively skating? This feels like the end, but I don’t want to lose Scott.”

“You’re not going to lose Scott,” said Jordan, her eyes softening. “That boy is glued to your side and he has been since he was nine years old. You couldn’t get rid of him even if you tried. What is it about this almost-kiss that tripped you up so badly? Did you not want to? Or did you want to and you’re afraid of what will happen next?”

“I don’t want to mess up what we have,” said Tessa slowly. “Things have been so good for so long because we haven’t crossed that line. What if we do and we regret it?”

“You’re never going to know until you try,” said Jordan.

Tessa sighed. Jordan had a point. “I don’t want to go there and find that it’s been some huge mistake,” said Tessa. “Marie-France told us while we were competing that once you cross that line, you can’t ever go back. Your relationship is changed forever. And I don’t want that to happen. I like where we are now.”

Jordan put down her spoon and fixed Tessa with a stare that froze her in place. “Look,” she said. “I’m your sister, and I can’t tell you what to do. I can only tell you what I’ve observed between the two of you for the last twenty years of your life, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s that the two of you are unbreakable. Whatever you decide to do, whatever you think is right, you can get through it together. Because you’re Tessa and Scott.”

Tessa wanted to reach across the table and give Jordan a huge hug. Her eyes stung with tears at her words, because she was right. If she and Scott could get through their horrible teenage years, two surgeries, three Olympics, a two-year retirement and a two-year comeback plan that nobody thought they would be able to pull off, then they could get through anything. She should know by now not to doubt whatever she had with Scott.

“Except this could change everything,” she said. “I don’t even know if he wants more.” 

“There’s no way to know for sure until you ask him,” said Jordan. She put down her spoon and fixed Tessa with a stare that made Tessa think she was looking straight into her soul. “The question you have to ask yourself is if you want more.”

Tessa’s mind went back to the moment during practice, the way his body fit so perfectly with hers. She remembered the feeling of his lips brushing against hers for the briefest second before Chiddy interrupted them and the look in Scott’s eyes whenever she pulled away from him after their routines.

The answer was simple. Too simple.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I think I do. I mean--maybe? I want to try.”

Jordan tried not to let her emotions show on her face, but Tessa saw a smile fighting to escape. Jordan dropped her gaze to her ice cream to hide it.

“Then don’t you think it’s time to tell him?” asked Jordan.

Tessa nodded, determination flooding her body like adrenaline right before a competition. It was far past time.

*

The rest of the evening with her sister passed by too quickly for Tessa’s liking. They talked about anything and everything under the sun, and soon Tessa felt the tension gathered from weeks in a foreign country seeping from her bones. Scott did not come up very often into their conversation, but he was a constant presence in the back of her mind.

Jordan could tell that Tessa was distracted the longer the night wore on. Finally, Jordan put down her glass of wine with a roll of her eyes.

“What are you waiting for?” asked Jordan. “Go tell him. There’s no point waiting.”

Tessa tried to make excuses, but Jordan was having none of it. Tessa soon found herself standing outside of Jordan’s apartment with firm instructions to “tell him how you feel already!” If Tessa did not already suspect that Jordan had been trying to pair up her and Scott for years, like the rest of the world, she definitely did now.

Tessa made the slow drive back to her house, anxiety turning her stomach into knots. Usually, she had some idea what Scott would say or do in any given situation, but he was a closed book to her. He had never given her any indication that he wanted more, but then again, he had never given her any indication that he didn’t, either. And they did have those those moments where she wasn’t the only one feeling anything.

Tessa bit back the nervous response to that thought: He had been distant from her ever since that moment in Japan. Maybe he didn’t want it. Or--

She shook her head to rid herself off those thoughts and used every trick taught to her by her mental coaches to calm herself down. There was no use worrying. She was an adult, Scott was an adult, and they could have an adult conversation about their not-so-platonic feelings for each other. Right?

As Tessa approached her driveway, the first thing she noticed was that there was a car in her driveway that was not supposed to be there.

More specifically, it was Scott’s car.

Tessa pulled into the driveway and shut her car off, panic rising up in her chest. When Jordan said that she should go tell Scott how she felt, she didn’t intend to tell him how she felt _tonight._ She wanted to sleep on it, maybe take a hot bath and come up with a script for what to say to him, but now here he was, in her driveway, and it was now or never.

Her knuckles turned white against the steering wheel of her car as she hesitated in her seat. She took a couple deep breaths and convinced herself that it would be fine.

Tessa fumbled for the door handle. It took her a couple tries, but she finally managed to open the door. She grabbed her purse and stepped out of her car, making her way across the driveway to her house. Scott was nowhere to be found: she had long ago given him a key to her place in case of emergencies, so he was likely already inside and he hadn’t seen or heard her approach. It gave her a few extra seconds to prepare for seeing his face.

Tessa braced herself and opened the front door only to discover the smell of fried eggs and toast permeating from the kitchen.

“Scott?” she called cautiously. How had he known when he would be home?

A couple seconds later, Scott poked his head around the corner of the kitchen and grinned at her, a spatula in his hand. “Hey,” he said. “Sorry to break in, but Jordan told me that you would be home soon and you might need a little actual food.”

Tessa dropped her purse onto an end table and vowed to strangle Jordan when she saw her next. “She texted you?” she asked.

“Well, actually, I texted her first.” To her surprise, Scott looked a little embarrassed at the thought. “I wanted to talk to you, but when I came by you weren’t home. I tried to text you but your phone is dead. I figured it was a safe bet you were with Jordan.”

Tessa nodded. She had meant to charge her phone on the plane or when she got to Jordan’s place, but it had completely slipped her mind. Apparently it must have died sometime during her visit with Jordan and she hadn’t noticed.

“Did you make me breakfast?”

Scott smiled at her and waved around his spatula. “Yeah,” he said. “I thought it would be a good idea if we ate while we talked.”

What felt like an anvil dropped into the pit of her stomach and lingered there. There was no more delaying the conversation they both needed to have.

“Okay,” said Tessa. She followed Scott into the kitchen and sat at the table. She watched as he bustled around the kitchen. He dropped pieces of bread into the toaster and cracked two eggs into the pan. She had seen Scott cook hundreds of times before, but for some reason, she could not get rid of the lump of her throat at the sight of him working in her kitchen and plating up food for her like he was perfectly content to do it for the rest of his life.

She wanted to wait until they had at least finished their meal before diving into the conversation, but her tongue had other ideas. She only took a few bites of her meal before the tension in the room grew too much for her to bear.

“We should talk about what happened in Japan,” she blurted out.

Scott’s entire body stiffened. He put down the fork and looked at her, the expression on his face unreadable. Tessa hated it when she could not understand what emotions were running through Scott’s mind. He was normally such an open book that this sudden coldness took her by surprise and made her feel like her entire world was slowly unraveling.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I wasn’t telling you the whole truth,” said Tessa before she could stop herself. “About what was bothering me there. It wasn’t only about our retirement.”

Scott rubbed the back of his neck and refused to look at her. “What was it about then?” he asked.

“It was about us,” said Tessa. She’d gone too far to back out now. “About our relationship.”

“I’ve been thinking about it too,” said Scott. He fiddled with his fork, sliding the tines slowly through the yolk on his plate. He somehow looked more nervous than Tessa, which she had no idea was even possible.  “I didn’t want to talk about it until we were home because I didn’t want it to get in the way of the tour.”

Tessa stared down at her plate, willing the flush in her cheeks to disappear. “I don’t know where to begin,” she confessed to her eggs.

“Me neither.”

They lapsed into the most uncomfortable silence Tessa had ever experienced with Scott. Her entire body was telling her to escape from this situation, to pass it off as a passing fancy, but her mind kept her planted in her seat. She opened her mouth to speak, not really knowing what she was about to say, when Scott beat her to it.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to go there,” he said. “Things have been so good between us for so long that if you want to forget any of it ever happened, it’s fine.”

Tessa dropped her fork to her plate with a clatter and stared up at Scott in open astonishment. “What are you talking about?” she asked. Something about the way he said those words made her heart start hammering wildly.

“We never talked about it,” said Scott. He had never looked so uncomfortable in his life. “It can just be like what happens on the ice sometimes, you know. We can pretend it never happened.”

Tessa half-wondered if she was hearing things correctly. “Pretend what never happened, exactly?” she asked carefully. She had to be absolutely, one hundred percent certain they were both thinking about the same moment, because if they weren’t, she felt like she might disappear into the floor and never resurface again.

Scott let out a frustrated huff and ran a hand through his hair so that it stuck up on end. “You’re gonna make me say it, T?” he asked. “There’s only one moment we never talked about but said we would. In Japan.”

“I don’t want to forget about it,” blurted out Tessa before she could stop herself. “I thought you wanted to forget about it, and that’s why I never talked about it. You were so distant after it happened that I thought you didn’t even want to go there.”

“I was trying to give you space,” said Scott. “You said we’d talk about it later and then you never--so I thought--maybe you thought it was a mistake--but that doesn’t mean that I--”

A kind of breathless, giddy hope overtook Tessa. Scott saw the shift in her features and trailed off, looking confused and flustered and hopeful all at once. For two smart people, they could act like morons when it came to acknowledging what was right in front of their face. Looking at Scott now, seeing the vulnerability in his expression, there could not be any doubt that he felt the same way she did.

“What?” he asked.

“The Olympics are over,” said Tessa. “I was scared before, but I’m not anymore. Maybe it’s time.”

Scott’s eyes lit up with the same fire she saw right before a performance. Maybe she should have read into all the tiny moments between them, all the lingering touches and all the soft words and the passionate performances, because they all led up to one inescapable conclusion, one incontrovertible fact:

She never wanted to live a day of her life without Scott by her side, and he felt the same way.

“It’s time for what?” he asked. He was going to make her say it, and Tessa felt the pressure in her chest easing away. The words no longer terrified her. The answer to the question she was too afraid to ask burned at the tip of her tongue.

“For what comes next,” she said.

She got up from her seat and walked around to Scott’s side of the table. She pulled him to his feet and wrapped her arms around his neck. Scott’s arms snaked around her waist and held her tightly to his chest, his eyes full of hope. Tessa’s hands slid through Scott’s hair, soft and silky underneath her fingers. She leaned up as Scott leaned down, their lips meeting in the middle.

At first, it was a kiss so gentle it made her heart feel like as a feather, but her entire being started to flood with desire as Scott brought one hand up to touch her face and used his other hand to pull her body flush against his own. When they finally broke away from the kiss, they were both breathless. Scott leaned his forehead against hers, his heavy breathing mingling with her own.

“You sure, T?” he asked.

Tessa laughed. “I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life.”

And as she pulled him down for another kiss, her entire body thrumming with possibility, there was no doubt in her mind that this was exactly where they were meant to end up. Whatever new challenges came their way, they would face them together--as they always had and always would.

 

**Author's Note:**

> *chuckles nervously*
> 
> There's probably more VM fic where this came from. I am participating in Camp NaNo this year, and all of my ideas center on these two idiots. I have another super fluffy one-shot in the back of my mind and then a super angsty future!fic that will probably destroy me mentally but IT WON'T LEAVE MY BRAIN. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this one, please leave me a kudo or a comment because it would really make my day!


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